Technologies for democratic society
Weekly outline
-
Lecture: Mondays at 15:15 - 17:00 in CM1 3
Exercise Session: Mondays at 17:15 - 18:00 in CM1 105, CM1 121
This course is highly interactive, and your active participation in lectures is essential.Course Staff
Professor: Bryan Ford
TAs: Shailesh Mishra, Louis-Henri Merino, Yi Jiang
AEs: Jérémy Hugentobler, Youssef Belghmi, Srushti Singh
The CS-234 staff can be reached by email, on Ed, and during exercise sessions.Assessments
Assignments make up 50% of the final grade, and the Final Exam accounts for the other 50%.
Assignments (Grade Weights & Deadlines)
HW #1 (5%): Usenet
- Due Sep 24 @ 11:59
HW #2 (15%): Peer Review
- Part 1 (6%): Write Up (due Oct 1 @ 23:59)
- Part 2 (6%): Peer Review (released Oct 1, due Oct 8 @ 23:59)
- Part 3 (3%): Metareview (released Oct 8, due Oct 15 @ 23:59)
HW #3 (10%): Ethereum Smart Contract
HW #4 (20%): Collective Problem Solving
-
This week: 1. Course introduction
Recording: https://drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/7q8WhQpUS5iV8Tb
Next week: 2. UseNet, Internet, and "Democratization"
-
By J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor, April 1968.
-
Excerpt: Chapter 8 from "Democracy and its Critics", Robert Dahl, 1989
-
By Michael and Ronda Hauben, April 1997.
Reading assignment: chapters 1-4 and 18.
-
This week: 2. UseNet, Internet, and "Democratization"
Video: https://mediaspace.epfl.ch/media/CS-234+Week+2/0_oy5akiib
Next week: 3. Social influence and choice
-
This week: 3. Social influence and choice
Next week: 4. Online trust networks and reputation systems
-
-
Please upload a PDF to Moodle with your short answers (3-5 sentences) to questions 1-3, a screenshot of your Usenet message with its headers (Ctrl + H) and the screenshot requested in question 2. Your short answers should not exceed half an A4 page. Name the file <YOUR_SCIPER>.pdf and do not include your name on the document.
Submission deadline is Thursday, September 26, 2024 @ 23.59.
-
In your second assignment, you are going to work on different stages of a peer-reviewing process. The assignment consist of three parts and you are going to work on the first part this week.
For part one, you are going to write a review for one of the assigned readings from the first two weeks of the course. You can find the handout here. The handout, which in this case also serves as the template for your reviews, is on the EPFL Google Drive so you can only access it with your EPFL email.
You will submit your reviews to your new friend HotCRP (not Moodle). You can find more about HotCRP and how to make a submission to HotCRP in the handout.
As mentioned above, this assignment consist of three parts that build on top of each other. Therefore, if you do not make a submission for part one, you are not going to be able to do the next two parts, and thus you will not receive points for this assignment. Please read the instructions in the handout carefully!
Submission deadline: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 @ 23:59.